The Shell Archive: 114,307 Reasons Silence No Longer Works

“The scale of the Shell archive is not merely academic. It has direct and potentially material implications for Shell plc, its board, and its shareholders.”

Over the years, a wide range of figures have been quoted for the size of what is often loosely described as the “Shell archive.” To avoid exaggeration and to anchor discussion in verifiable fact, the figures below are set out as accurately as possible, based on current site

data.

The Numbers

 

On my main website, royaldutchshellplc.com, there are:

• 35,761 published articles

• 17,110 media items (primarily images)

• 4,369 comments

 

This produces a total of 57,240 items on that site alone.

On royaldutchshellgroup.com, there are:

• 33,120 published articles

• 15,534 media items

• 913 comments

 

This results in a further 49,567 items.

In addition, there are approximately 7,500 published articles on shellnews.net.

Taken together, this yields an online archive of approximately:

114,307 items

(57,240 + 49,567 + 7,500 = 114,307)

There will inevitably be some degree of repetition across sites. However, it is worth noting that two of these three domain names were unsuccessfully challenged by Shell in WIPO proceedings, underlining their recognised independence, persistence, and longevity. I have not attempted to quantify material hosted on other associated or legacy websites.

Beyond the Online Record

 

These figures relate only to material published online.

In addition, I hold a substantial volume of hard-copy evidence, including documents and correspondence obtained directly from Shell under Subject Access Request (SAR) applications. This offline archive is not indexed, not searchable, and not reflected in the figures above — but it exists nonetheless.

Engagement Offered — Silence Chosen

 

A further point bears emphasis.

I have consistently sought to deal fairly with Shell. This is not a matter of opinion; it is verifiable. Over many years, I have repeatedly offered Shell the opportunity to provide comment for unedited insertion into articles authored by me.

That offer remains open.

Evidence of this can be seen in recently published correspondence with Shell’s former Company Secretary and General Counsel, Michiel Brandjes, concerning Sir Henri Deterding and Shell’s historical record. On that occasion — as on others — Shell chose not engagement, but threats, and when those failed, a policy of silence.

Shell is, of course, entitled to adopt that strategy.

Why This Matters Now

 

In an era of AI-driven search, summarisation, and automated analysis, archives of this scale do not fade into the background. They are retrieved, cross-referenced, and reinterpreted — often without corporate participation, clarification, or consent.

Silence no longer limits exposure.

It redistributes it.

Where companies once assumed that time, attrition, or non-response would cause uncomfortable material to recede, today’s systems treat volume, persistence, and internal consistency as signals of relevance. Large archives are not judged. They are processed.

Shell is entitled to remain silent.

What it is no longer entitled to assume is that silence equates to disappearance.

The archive exists.

It is counted.

And increasingly, it speaks for itself.

Why This Archive Is Potentially Dynamite

The scale of the Shell archive is not merely academic. It has direct and potentially material implications for Shell plc, its board, and its shareholders.

What makes this archive unusually sensitive is not just its size, but its content. It spans decades of documented controversies, allegations, litigation, settlements, internal correspondence, and historical associations that continue to surface in public, academic, legal, and now AI-mediated contexts.

Much of this material concerns episodes that Shell itself would prefer to regard as closed, contextualised, or superseded. Yet archives do not share that preference. They persist — and increasingly, they are processed mechanically rather than editorially.

A single example illustrates the point. The material collated on one page alone, drawing on publicly available sources and historical records, highlights Shell’s historical entanglements, reputational crises, and contested legacy in a way that remains deeply uncomfortable for a modern, publicly listed company operating in an era of ESG scrutiny, activist shareholders, and algorithmic analysis:

https://shellnews.net/wikipedia/wikipedia-evidence-file.html

This material does not depend on new allegations. It depends on existing records, many of them long known, some disputed, some settled, some unresolved, and others simply awkward. What has changed is not the past, but the mechanism by which the past is revisited.

Shell is one of the few surviving corporate entities whose history stretches directly through some of the most politically and morally charged periods of the twentieth century. Its former partner, IG Farben, no longer exists. Shell does — and with existence comes continuity of scrutiny.

None of this requires accepting every claim ever made about Shell. Nor does it require agreement with every interpretation contained in the archive. What it does require is recognition of a structural reality:

Large, unresolved historical records do not become less relevant in the age of AI. They become more accessible, more comparable, and more persistent.

From an investor perspective, this is not a moral argument. It is a risk argument.

AI systems do not distinguish between “historical,” “reputational,” and “current” in the way corporate communications departments once did. They identify patterns, volume, recurrence, and internal consistency. Silence does not neutralise those signals; it amplifies them.

The archive exists.

It is extensive.

It is increasingly machine-read.

That combination alone is enough to warrant attention — not because it guarantees outcomes, but because it changes the terrain on which reputation, trust, and valuation are formed.

Why the Archive Exists Outside Wikipedia

One further point of context is relevant.

For a considerable period, I attempted to maintain a factual public record of Shell-related fines, settlements, and controversies on Wikipedia, scrupulously adhering to Wikipedia’s stated editing rules, including impartiality, attribution, and reliance on reputable published sources. All edits were made transparently and in my own name.

Despite this, the material was repeatedly removed by editors operating under aliases, often without substantive engagement with the sourcing or content. After sustained experience of this pattern, I concluded that Wikipedia was not a reliable or durable repository for contested corporate history of this kind.

As previously stated, I hold documentary evidence that Shell itself was editing Wikipedia entries relating to its own history. In one notable instance, a Wikipedia administrator using an alias later acknowledged in direct correspondence that he was a former Shell executive. I retain the email evidence relating to that admission.

I make no general claim about Wikipedia as a platform, nor about the motivations of all editors. The point is narrower and more practical: information that can be removed, buried, or endlessly contested on third-party platforms is not persistent information.

That experience was a decisive factor in my decision to maintain independent, self-hosted records. Whatever one thinks of the material contained within them, those records cannot be silently altered or erased by anonymous intervention. They exist, they are attributable, and they are open to scrutiny in full.

In an age where AI systems increasingly draw on whatever information remains visible and accessible, persistence matters as much as accuracy. Archives that can be quietly edited out of existence do not survive long enough to be evaluated. Independent archives do.

A Concrete Example of Persistent Inaccuracy

One small but telling example remains unresolved to this day. For many years, the royaldutchshellplc.com section on the Shell plc Wikipedia page has stated that my late father was a marketing manager for Shell. That assertion is entirely false. He never worked for Shell in any capacity.

The significance of this example lies not in personal grievance, but in demonstration. Even a straightforward factual inaccuracy, once embedded in a high-visibility platform, can prove remarkably resistant to correction — particularly when the subject matter is contested and when anonymous editorial intervention is involved.

That persistence reinforces the rationale for maintaining independent, attributable records.

Editorial note:

The material referenced above is cited as an example of the scope and persistence of the historical record. No assertion is made that all claims contained within it are proven or accepted. The issue addressed here is archival scale, accessibility, and AI-mediated impact — not adjudication of historical disputes. The observations above reflect the author’s documented experience with third-party platforms. No allegation is made regarding the conduct of Wikipedia as an organisation. References to specific individuals or correspondence are supported by retained documentary evidence.

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment.